Hopefully this will be somewhat helpful even though it's the sort of thing that might not be easy to implement--and because I'm not mentioning a specific game like you asked for.

Basically, I've always been a fan of encountering different types of enemies at higher difficulty levels. That is, perhaps at lower difficulty levels, bands of thugs wander around, who don't have good weapons, aren't very good shots, and are generally easy to kill. It makes sense--this would certainly make things easier.

Then, on higher difficulty levels, you encounter more "elite" sort of enemies. They'll be good shots, work well together (an AI issue), have better equipment including guns and armor, and generally be harder to kill--not just because they have high health values, but because they're actually designed to be difficult enemies.

I think giving this distinction between enemy types makes it a lot more believable for a player. That is, the player isn't forced to accept the fact that a higher difficulty level is just a "setting." It's a different experience, with new enemy types, and perhaps even a new play style.

As I said before, this would of course require a lot more work. However, in the end, I think it would benefit the player.

The level of reward should match the difficulty. Don't make hard mode harder with no benefit, reward the greater skill needed for the harder difficulty with something, anything.

My favorite example of this from the last few years is God Hand. If you chose the higher difficulties, you could access a greater range of "difficulty levels" in-game which would increase as you fought better in the game in real-time. In this way, the game could get exponentially harder the better you played, but for playing on the higher difficulties you got more money for defeating enemies and all of your multipliers were higher. Thus the player who managed to stay at the higher difficulty ranges earned more money and was able to buy more moves to customize his/her playstyle.

What Kauza said sounds like a good idea too.

My favorite hard mode doesn't come from a shooter/rpg, but here it is anyway:

Advance Wars, a turn-based strategy game. Save the latest iteration, once you complete the single player campaign, you can do it again in hard mode. What changes isn't the computer AI or the nature of combat (ie a tank will do the same damage), but instead each map is tweaked to challenge your strategy more rigorously.

Example: there's usually a stage early on that teaches you to use long-range units in bottlenecks effectively. You set up a blocking unit that absorbs damage and your artillery plugs away. In hard mode, the enemy has more firepower at its disposal, and gets a couple infantry that can move through the mountains and attack your artillery directly if you're not careful, and the friendly city that you used for defense is now gone.

It's more enjoyable mostly due to the fact that you don't know what to expect the second time around-- as opposed to, say, Call of Duty, where hard mode just means the same enemies and terrain but less health.

Additionally, as you play through these maps, you can make comparisons to the normal versions. When you see what's changed, you think, "oh no!" But as you gain the upper hand and win, there's a feeling of triumph and progression: "I struggled on this in normal mode, but look, I just beat the hard version!"

Just a comment on some of the stuff above.

I appreciate general comments but what I'm looking for is not so much "I think hard games should be like X" but more "here is a specific game with a hard mode, I enjoyed it because it did X, Y, Z".

If there are NO games with hard modes you've played that you enjoyed, feel free to say that, and then say why you liked it.

I really enjoyed what the Metal Gear Solid games did with their hard modes. It wasn't just limiting the amount of ammo you had and making the enimies take more damage and kill you in one or two shots(with deadly accuracy). It was partially because they seemed to be made more aware of their surroundings, and would pick up on you unless you were being absolutely stealthy. Not just that, but the location of enemies were tweaked up too, making you have to think a little bit more about what the safest route to sneak through would be, and emphasized more uses of the various tactics you had availaible to you.

Example of what I mean: In the "regular"/"normal" difficulty, you could CQC slam a soldier to knock them out for a long period of time, and only rarely would be found by another soldier and get waken early. In the "Extreme" difficulty, the CQC slam only knocks out a soldier for a few seconds, and when he wakes up, he'll put out an alert to the other guards making them more aware. Other guards in the area also will run by to check up on a knocked out teammate more often in the harder difficulties.

How about Superhuman for Resistance 2's coop mode?? The extra difficulty almost completely changes the way you play the game. It forces you to work more as a team, play it safe and use all your resources. The normal mode was more about competing with your teammates for kills than it was about working together. Superhuman made just surviving an accomplishment. The fact that a player needed to be revived by a teammate also added to the challenge. Lastly, the player should be rewarded for choosing a harder difficulty, not just by having the personal gratification. With Superhuman mode, you may die a lot easier and the enemies are harder to kill, but you earn twice the XP and twice the grey tech.

If the harder mode you've created is more fun than the easier mode, then you know you've created the perfect difficulty curve. Resistance 2's coop did exactly this.

I definitely aggre about the MGS hard modes. Those literally make the game fun, there's a rev rant about it at http://www.destructoid.com/rev-rant-snakes-plants-and-difficulty-132878.phtml

I also enjoyed the Shadow of the Colossus hard mode, because it applied the concept of simply increasing one variable's difficulty, but in a very strategic way. While it's a total pain when the enemies just have more hp, maybe the SotC method would to make only certain kinds of damage affect the enemies.(explosives, head shots)

I can't really think of any games where there was a good hard mode--I generally just play normal, sorry, but if I did play them, I would rather go for the ones where you had to at least change up your strategies. For instance...

The Diablo series (Blizzard) has three difficulties. Normal is self-explanatory, Nightmare is Hard, and Hell is Very Hard. The enemies naturally get a stat and health boost across difficulties, but what's interesting (at least in D2) is that by Hell, almost every enemy is immune to something: Either physical attacks, one of the three elements, or non-elemental damage. Some are immune to more than one. That naturally leads to a problem of you being unable to kill certain enemies. What if you made a pure Lightning Sorceress? You either have to avoid anything immune to Lightning or go for more elements or use a hireling or multi-play.

It gets to the point where people plan the life of their character through Hell even before they start. Some are capable of breaking the immunities (with lots of work) but even then, they're still highly resistant to that element. Just that you can chip away the monstrous amount of health. Apart from that, higher-level monsters exist in each harder difficulty (though it's the same game three times through), and there are tiers of equipment that only can drop in those difficulties. So in effect, if you truly want to clear the game, you have to beat it three times in that way.

Also with D2, there was a hidden command in the game to simulate extra players in a single player game (as monsters scaled to the number of players in multiplayer). This is probably a good example of rewarding the player for a harder game. The monsters get a stat boost et al, but they also give more experience and have better drop rates and so on. The best part is that you can change that setting at any time so mobs can't really overpower you (unless you're truly suicidal). It's probably an example of more traditional hard-mode play, as opposed to the actual difficulties changing up your tactics too.

In all honesty, I dislike playing the same game several times and rarely re-play a game on a "hardcore" or "hell" mode. There is also a broad difference in "normal" - in some games it's too difficult, in other games it's too easy.

Oblivion was a very long game and I liked how they utilized a difficulty slider that could be adjusted at any time during the game. I mostly played between normal and the hardest setting, but there were days when I was exhausted, just wanted to relax and be an unstoppable killing machine - it was nice to notch down the difficulty slider. The oblivion slider essentially just affected hit points (both enemies and the player) and it was a very simple system. Unfortunately rewards didn't seem to coincide with the difficulty system and there should be rewards for playing on a higher difficulty. It really depends on the game, but better drops, faster levelling, more levelling options... there should be some reward. For consoles, the achievements/trophies could be tied to beating boss monsters on particular difficulty settings.

For challenge I tend to play online competitive games (and the co-op mode of Resistance 2 that Celcia mentioned was an excellent example of difficulty in online), but I'll assume that you are referring to single player offline games here (because difficulty in online games is an entirely different topic with many variables). In offline games if I run into a problem and get stuck, I'll often put the game aside... and I don't always go back to them. A difficulty slider or on-the-fly difficulty change system can allow me to complete the game - but I do think that any trophies/achievements should reflect this. I don't care at all about my trophies, I'd be happy just to putter along and finish the game... but there are many that take them very seriously and attaining the "platinum trophy" should reflect the most difficult game setting.

If your query is in regards to online or co-op games, it would be nice if you could clarify... because I have pretty definite ideas on this topic. It's an entirely different issue though!

I might catch flack for this, but I loved the extreme challenge of Call of Duty 4's Veteran Mode. It was brutal, but surprisingly fair, and more to the point, aside from the massive amount of grenade spamming, I imagine it is what like being in a real firefight is like. I just loved the rewarding feeling of finally beating a level on Veteran. It was incredibly frustrating, and I havent finished it yet, but it was shockingly fun to play some of those levels on veteran and take things a bit slower. I really cant wait for MW2 due to the rumors they fixed the infinite spawning enemies and the grenade spamming. But the reason why I loved it was because despite the annoying things, I felt so accomplished whenever I would finish a mission, and I knew they were not impossible, I just had to play the level as a true spec ops soldier probably would have to, and that was it's own kind of cool.

One quick note, Insane on the first Mass Effect was amazing ly fun, but not really tough, so long as you kept an eye out for Snipers and took a bit more careful control over your Squad Mate's powers. More disconcerting though was that the Geth Armatures were simply an annoyance then actually challenging, as they took forever to kill, but were never really challenging. Just saying...

Gamegoblin - if you can move yourself to Edmonton and would be interested in a term tester position at Bioware, message me and I'll let you know the next time we're hiring term testers.

Thanks for the replies so far keep them coming. As always I'm impressed with the variety of games you all are bringing up it's really awesome!

Generally, when I think of good examples of "hard" or "insane", I think of Call of Duty 4, Diablo II (perfectly executed here) and Dead Space. If you can even recall the game Shogo or Oni from long ago, those are also good examples.

In Oni and Shogo, the harder the games got, the more realistic and rewarding they became. The playing field was perfectly even with 1 enemy being as strong (health and damage wise) as the player. That's what made each encounter in Oni such a challenge and rewarding. Definitely what I look for in a difficulty setting.

In COD4 or Dead Space, If I was to blindly run a corner, I'd die after only a few direct hits rather than being naturally able to survive numerous hits if I was on "medium" or "casual". This also comes with the typical better enemy AI and such.

In Diablo II, playing on a harder difficulty included resistances and invulnerabilities to certain weapons/magic. This was balanced by better item drops to be able to handle the threat. This way, there was immediate reward for beating something more challenging. An achievement that I'd get down the road wouldn't motivate me nearly enough as something immediate that'd also assist in the gameplay.

Keypoints: Provide me with a challenge I can win and a reward I'd get immediately, I'll take it.

Hope this helps,

- Stan

I don't really have much to say about your question, but I just wanted to shyly come over and wave and stare. I'm a big fan of BioWare and, specifically, Mass Effect. I'm just playing through it for the first time and I'm in love with it. So, um, hi. I love you. :)

I know you're not looking for general comments, but I figure a general one is better than nothing, right? I really dislike it when harder difficulty modes put the emphasis on simply tweaking how strong/weak you are and/or how strong/weak your enemies are. I much prefer difficulty modes that change the game itself. Different enemies, more enemies, perhaps more limitations on the player's options or abilities.

An example of what I don't like is Left 4 Dead's style of difficulty adjustment. A great game, but the fact that, on the Expert difficulty, the most basic (and most plentiful) zombies do 20HP damage with one hit? Totally ruins it for me. So yeah, fewer boring tweaks like that one and more significant changes, like the way the Halo series brings out more-dangerous types of enemies on the higher difficulties.

Okay, I'm done. Guess I had more to say than I thought.

MGS3. I won't go into too much detail as this video explains in much more detail than I could here. For me, the best part of the harder difficulty modes was that even though they cranked up the difficulty in the 'usual' ways (stronger enemies, weaker player, less resources etc), the game provided the player with interesting ways to counter these changes (eg. new strategies that weren't as 'necessary' on the lower difficulties, but had more importance on harder ones).

This accomplished several things:
1) The game became more challenging without becoming more frustrating.
2) The game overall offered a different experience.

Conversely, a game like Call of Duty: World at War became virtually unplayable on higher difficulty levels (despite cranking up the difficulty in the same ways) because it relied on the same gameplay. For this reason, it felt exactly like the lower difficulties, but far more frustrating. Another side effect of this is that it felt 'lazy'; as if the devs had merely increased a few variables and labeled it 'extreme', whereas MGS3 felt fresh despite increasing the difficulty in the same way.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is to give the player choices; even if they don't need to use them on lower difficulties, they can make harder ones a great deal more enjoyable. Simply making enemies harder tends to come off as lazy and rarely adds anything of real value to the game - for me at least.

I enjoy all CoD Veteran modes simply because of the frequent checkpoints. Everything is hard and each battle takes some time and requires a method but it's all possible because of how frequent that game puts checkpoints.

I don't remember if it's actually true, or if I imagined it, but No One Lives Forever had a good hard mode. Instead of just having you die faster or making enemies harder to kill, it actually seemed to make the AI more relentless. Enemies searched for you for longer, which in turn reemphasized how much care you need to take while stealthing around.

I also liked Hitman 2's hard mode for the same reason. Mainly, I just don't like it when you can not use gaming mechanics in a game such as cover or stealth when it's just as easy (or easier) to run and gun. Harder modes in those games I mentioned above force you to be more tactical and that's a good thing.

There are a couple of good examples that people have already pointed out that I'd like to second-

God Hand- It's insanely challenging, but fun. The real-time difficulty changes were cool too. Do well and get rewarded more points and currency, while at the same time making it more difficult. Doing poorly ratchets it back down again.

Rock Band- Expert as "true" difficulty. This is one of the only modern games I can think of that locks content if you play on easy. I like the idea- keep certain areas or missions locked unless you're on a high enough difficulty. That means that you can have a mission or two that's walled off from players who don't want the challenge, so you're free to design to a specific difficulty, and further encourage replays.

And as for a few of my own choices:

Mass Effect- Not to kiss ass or anything, but Mass Effect's combat was extremely fun, especially on the advanced difficulties. On Normal mode, I found a pistol and some first-aid packs were all I needed. It wasn't until I replayed on a higher difficulty that strategy started to emerge from a need to survive. I finally started using all my fancy powers and squad functions! Another game that did something like this was The Witcher- you had alchemy and alternate weapons and all that, but only on higher difficulties did they start to become necessity. Let's just leave out those one-hit rocket deaths in this next one, ok?

Vagrant Story- I can't remember that it had Hard mode as such, but it's more accurate to say that the whole game was hard mode. But that's what made it fun! Enemies could kill you, so you had to make sure you were properly equipped for each encounter. This made sure that you were using the deep equipment building system, something that I'm sure many people would have flown through the game without giving a second thought if not for the fear of death.

Star Ocean (2 or 3)- Another RPG example, but for good reason. On higher difficulties, systems that would go unused or unneeded would suddenly be lifesavers. Not to mention that you'd need to level higher, earning more abilities and such. Also, on your second replay, a whole new dungeon would open, with tons of areas and an extreme difficulty level. The best part is, these served as more of a dungeon crawl, so levels could be heavily reused, and at the same time they promoted replay with the hardest bosses residing there. Nowadays, add an achievement for beating it, and you can have people busy for weeks.

So in the end, my take is that hard modes should eke out better strategies that in normal exist but aren't necessary. In addition, adding a carrot (bonus content, achievements) means that more people will attempt these advanced play styles, adding longevity and hopefully a better appreciation for the game as a whole.

I want to elaborate on Ninja Gaiden Black, since the GameGoblin left out what I like so much.

Ninja Gaiden Black is basically a different game with the same combat on the same maps. On harder difficulties, all of the item placements (potions, maps, etc.) are placed in different spots--this even includes your weapons. I think it would've been even better if the save points were in different spots.

By far the coolest thing about this is the different enemies. There are enemies on Hard mode, Ninja mode, and Master Ninja mode that you never even see on Normal difficulty. And I don't just mean stronger enemies with a different color palette, but brand new character models with brand new moves and brand new strategies to figure out.

This even applies to bosses. A lot of bosses have additional moves on harder difficulties; and there are even some all-new bosses, like the fight against a Ryu clone in the monastery library (still one of my favorites).

Compare this to a series like God of War or Devil May Cry, where harder difficulty simply means you take more damage and deal less to the same enemies with the same moves.

I know I'm seeing your post a bit late, and I don't know how easy it would be to add these things to a game like Mass Effect, but . . . you're BioWare. You can figure something out.